Blunt and scary

I always thought the most scathing criticism of New Testament circumcision proponents was in Galatians. The apostle Paul writes that he wishes they would "emasculate themselves" (Galatians 5:12).

But today I read something that rattled me even more. Paul actually called the circumcision party "unbelievers."

Now you have to work with me here. The data is indirect, but it is right there. Paul is exercised about various factions who are upending the truth, but there is one group in particular that has got his goat, and he has them in mind with every stroke of the pen:

"For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced . . ." (Titus 1:10-11).

From here Paul takes a slight rabbit trail with a comment about Cretans (v.12), and takes a potshot at myths and man-made commandments (v.13-14). But he is still seething over that dreaded group of circumcision peddlers when he makes the following comment:

"To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure . . ." (v.15).

What alarmed me is that this sin is closer to home-to my own personal realm of possibility-than the sin of practicing religious circumcision. I stopped a moment and tried the verse on for size. Is it possible to be "unbelieving" and not even realize it? Is it possible to think that you "get" the gospel, but you really don't? You are deeply self-deceived?

Whenever I know what is right to do at any given moment, but I don't do it, is that not an act of "unbelief"? Have I not said to myself in that instance that I do not trust God's way, or that I do not believe in consequences to my sin? If you string enough unbelief moments together, and over enough days, does that not add up to a lifestyle of unbelief? Are you not a functional "unbeliever"? Were not the circumcision party, though they deemed themselves Christians, naught but functional unbelievers?

The circumcision proponents were undoubtedly the last to know it. They thought they were the best kind of believers in Christ. But deep in their hearts they had a low view of the value and the power of His death; it wasn't quite sufficient. They would be the people classified by the book of Hebrews as spurning the Son of God, profaning the blood of the covenant, and outraging the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29).

In other words, Paul's fantasy of emasculation was not for some two-horned, green-eyed monster heresy, but for the perpetrating of a common spirit of unbelief. That is sobering. Any time you or I weaken, by even a small degree, the spirit of faith in someone, we are liable to this holy rancor.

Circumcision heresy is exotic, but unbelief is garden-variety stuff. The two receive equal condemnation by Paul.

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